This Watch Discovered His Sleep Apnea

For the last two years my husband has had strange random episodes both in the daytime and overnight that have sent him to the doctor but there were no answers. This last episode of finding him one morning unresponsive that sent us to the emergency room also found nothing which was terrifying. Days ago while on lunch break at work he suddenly dozed off while sitting talking to me. In the interim he has been wearing an Apple Watch hoping it would clue us in to what might be going on but it showed nothing unusual in the health data it collected leaving us both frustrated. 

If you read my previous blog post you will recall the Apple Watch did not detect a hard fall I took more than once, prompting me to dig out an older Samsung Galaxy watch for shits and giggles to see if it did better, which it did. This last week my husband and I went together to the hospital where he had a chest scan and blood work, again all was well but was it really? No. On a whim or instinct I slapped a Galaxy watch (we have 2 older ones, a 3 and a 5th generation) on him at bedtime to check his blood oxygen level overnight and turned on the sleep apnea feature in the Samsung Health app on a retired Galaxy  phone. Nobody had tracked his blood oxygen level and for weeks in the back of my mind the thought was nagging me to try it.

 

In order for the Galaxy watch to detect sleep apnea it must be worn to bed on 3 consecutive nights overnight. The first night of wearing the watch to bed it alerted us his blood oxygen level was fluctuating (as low as 71) way below normal, and the 3rd night it detected possible moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea. I then purchased a separate SpO2 finger sensor to be sure the watch readings were correct and they were very accurate. Armed with this new information I contacted our doctor office and we went forward from there. I am so thankful I had that Galaxy watch 5 right now I can’t even begin to tell you. 

Thinking back to last year it all now makes sense. He had suddenly started getting drenched with sweat off and on at night sleeping. He had begun snoring unusually loud like a bear and sometimes woke up coughing, mornings he would often have a headache. During the day at work a few times he had gotten dizzy and once passed out which landed him in a local emergency room, yet nobody has ever found anything. Some days he would wake up tired or suddenly feel wiped out by noon which is no where near normal as he is overactive. Just days ago at work he all of the sudden fell asleep sitting up while talking to me on our lunch break. My husband doesn’t ever get tired in this manner and it alarmed even him, what if he’d been driving? 

The human body is a fascinating thing but can hide its secrets well, you just need to know where to look. As far as smartwatches go, the Samsung watch feature may have saved my husband’s life literally. Sleep apnea won’t kill you directly but the serious complications from it can and his symptoms were increasingly getting worse. I shudder to think where this all could have ended up and I'm a new believer that smartwatch tech isn't just a flex. As much as my husband likes his Apple watch, in the last year Apple has disabled the SpO2 sensor feature here in the states and thankfully the Samsung watch had his back.

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